IOC Sets Sights on Internet

In a revealing sign of the import of the technology and finance issues that have both nothing and everything to do with sports, the International Olympic Committee announced plans Monday to convene an Internet summit.

Amid pressure from broadcasters and others to marry the Olympic Games and the Internet, an IOC committee said Monday it plans to hold a “New Media and Sport” conference here--where the IOC is based--in November with the intent of inviting a who’s who in sports and cyberspace.

“We have to find some way to get our Internet act together,” said Canadian Dick Pound, an IOC vice president who for several years has negotiated its lucrative U.S. television rights contracts.

Confirmed IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, “At the moment, we are lost.”

The plans were announced as the IOC’s ruling Executive Board arrived for three days of meetings aimed partly at quelling persistent media reports of impending doom at this summer’s Sydney Games--but mostly at more business. The IOC is due to review its accounts with dozens of international sports federations, money derived mostly from TV revenues.

Perhaps the key issue facing the IOC as it explores the Internet is that it has signed long-term TV contracts with broadcasters around the world. In the United States, for instance, NBC is paying $3.5 billion to televise the Games, Winter and Summer, from Sydney through 2008.

Audio and video from the Games would be a natural for the Internet. Each Summer Games provides more than two weeks of sports “content.”

The IOC is under increasing pressure from its broadcast “partners” to include the Internet in the definition of the rights granted them. The long-term contracts are generally ambiguous on the point.

The contracts clearly, however, protect a network in one country from a network in another nation. That means, for instance, that NBC doesn’t have the right to post Games audio or video on an NBC Web site unless it can guarantee those sounds or images won’t leave the United States.